Allen Ginsberg Thought The Beatles Were Naive When He First Met Them
Allen Ginsberg initially thought The Beatles were naive when he first met them. However, he soon learned that they were innovators and artists like him.
Allen Ginsberg thought The Beatles were naive when he first met them
In Martin Scorsese’s 2005 documentary No Direction Home (per Ginsberg’s website), Ginsberg explained the first time he met The Beatles. He said he’d just been kicked out of Cuba “for talking privately about Castro’s persecution of gay people.” Then, he went to Czechoslovakia but they also kicked him out a week later. They deported him to London around the time of Bob Dylan’s concerts at the Royal Albert Hall.
There was a “very exciting scene back in the hotel,” and Dylan was down the hall with The Beatles. Ginsberg said he received a message that he should come down the hall to meet them all. He went, but when he arrived, everyone was sitting “totally stone-cold silent frozen paranoid.”
Not knowing his place, Ginsberg sat down on the side of Dylan’s armchair. John Lennon said snidely, “Why don’t you sit a little closer?” Ginsberg suddenly realized “they were just so naive, they were young.” The beat poet decided to fall over, laughing onto John’s lap, and looked up at him.
He asked John, “Do you ever read William Blake?” He replied, “Never ‘eard of him.” John’s wife Cynthia interjected, “Oh John, stop lying!” Then everybody laughed, and “the scene sort of broke up, but, you know, the ice was broken.”
“It struck me as funny that these guys at the summit of power, spiritual power, musical power, world-famed, ’65, June, were so unsure of their minds and speech,” Ginsberg said.
However, eventually, they all became friends.
Ginsberg and another beat poet enjoyed a Beatles song
The Beatles also made friends with beat poet William S. Burroughs. He and Ginsberg were impressed with a Beatles song, “Eleanor Rigby.”
In The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, Paul McCartney wrote that Burroughs was present to hear the song’s final verse. “He said he was impressed by how much narrative I’d got into three verses,” Paul wrote. “And it did feel like a breakthrough for me lyrically – more of a serious song.”
Paul said Ginsberg thought it was a great poem, “so I’m going to go with Allen,” Paul said. “He was no slouch.”
The beat poet greeted The Beatles naked at his 39th birthday party
According to Joshua M. Greene’s Here Comes The Sun: The Spiritual And Musical Journey Of George Harrison, Ginsberg greeted George Harrison and his wife Pattie Boyd in the nude during his 39th birthday party. The new couple “made a hasty retreat.”
In the book, In the Sixties, Barry Miles wrote (per Beatles Bible) that Ginsberg “got completely drunk and stripped off his clothes, putting his baggy underpants on his head and hanging a hotel ‘Do not disturb’ notice around his c***.”
It was at that moment that The Beatles arrived. John and George allegedly checked for any photographers. Ginsberg kissed John on the cheek, and John mentioned “he used to draw a magazine at art school called the Daily Howl [in reference to Ginsberg’s poem Howl].”
Ginsberg and The Beatles had a drink, and then John and George made for the exit. When Miles asked John why he was leaving so early, John replied, “You don’t do that in front of the birds!”
The following year, after hearing Ginsberg was an audience member at their concert at the Portland Coliseum, John called out to the beat poet from the stage.
Ginsberg was only one of the many characters The Beatles met in their travels.
